Better is Better

CHILDREN? ON THE PUMP? OF COURSE.

If your child is insulin-dependent, they should be on the insulin pump. It is the best available treatment for insulin-dependent diabetics.

As a parent, all you want for your child is a perfect life, devoid of any pain, punctuated by little moments of boundless joy. As a parent, that is not too much to ask.

Every parent of a diabetic child would take the condition away from their child and accept the consequences for themselves in a heartbeat. But you can’t.

All you can do is try, in any way possible, to make it better. For children with Type I, or insulin-dependent diabetes, there is a way to make it better. For them. And for you.

INSULIN-DEPENDENT KIDS SHOULD BE ON THE INSULIN PUMP.

Why? Because your kid deserves a better life. And the pump will give an insulin-dependent child a better life.

Insulin, thankfully, brilliantly, was discovered and prescribed as a treatment for diabetes back in the 1920s. Syringes were there too. Back in the 1920s. And they are still being prescribed.

IS THE PUMP TOO COMPLICATED FOR A YOUNG CHILD? NO.
Children don’t learn to walk when they’re toddlers because it’s EASIER than crawling. They have crawling all figured out. It works. They’re even pretty good at it. It gets them basically where they need to go when they’re one-and-a-half. It might be a little awkward or uncomfortable from our grownup point-of-view, but we think they don’t know any better.

So why do they move on to walking? Abandon what is apparently working so well? Work so hard and accept so many setbacks to attain something that they don’t have any guarantees will even work for them? Why don’t they just stick with the tried and true?

They learn to walk because they can use their imagination. They allow themselves to imagine something that is BETTER than crawling.

They learn to walk because it’s BETTER than crawling.

And toddlers, bless them, are charmed by any new, bright thing. Somehow they know and trust that this new thing will make their lives better and more interesting and they will be able to see better and more interesting things. They’re risk-takers, the little rascals. And somehow they just know that someday walking will be as easy as crawling seems now.

How do they know this? Why are little tiny kids willing to work so hard to change their little lives when what they have seems to be perfectly adequate? Kids are always much smarter than we give them credit for. Smarter than the rest of us old stuck-in-our-ways-until-we-die-or-are-dragged-from-them-kicking-and-screaming know-it-all old folks.

Think of the supreme walking challenge from the toddler perspective: WORST CASE you drop back into the old mode— crawling. It still works. The fallback position, as it were.

This is what we need to learn from toddlers: Trust. Trust that there is something better. Take a small leap. Use our imagination. Stop crawling and try something that might make a life a little better. Act like a big baby.

Click here to get an excerpt from BETTER IS BETTER, the completely biased story on the insulin pump.

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